Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Power and Powerlessness of Transnational Narratives among Gay Martinican Men

Abstract

In Martinique, self‐identified gay men often tell each other stories about gay communities in other societies. France and Martinique are central characters in these stories but their presence is largely negative: life in the former is criticized for its economic or racial hardships and life in the latter is criticized for homophobia, hypocrisy, and smallness, creating a frustrating catch‐22 for these men. However, in these narratives Quebec often emerges as an ideal destination of racial and sexual freedom. In this paper, I argue that Quebec is signified as utopic in terms that are antithetical and therefore profoundly connected to impressions of social life in France and Martinique. At the same time, however, I maintain that these narratives also reveal common threads in the African‐pan‐American diasporic experience. Furthermore, these men's experiences of "gay" life in other countries demonstrate their awareness of a "global gay" identity, albeit one that is commercially and ideologically centered in Euro‐American societies, [homosexuality, Martinique, transnationalism, diaspora, race]